The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Mixed reality (MR) or hybrid reality, encompassing both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), merges real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Traditionally, VR views or AR views may be achieved with the aid of a VR head mount display (HMD) or an AR HMD respectively. Since a VR HMD and an AR HMD may have different requirements on optical systems each uses, it may be difficult to achieve both VR views and AR views by a current VR HMD or a current AR HMD alone. A VR HMD may block natural views of a user to create immersive experience. In addition, a VR HMD may rely on high power magnifier-like optics to achieve wide field of view (FOV) for virtual images, which may distort the natural views. On the other hand, an AR HMD may require unblocked natural views. Augmented views of the natural views may be achieved in a limited portion of the natural views to alter a user's natural views. In addition, the augmented views of an AR HMD may typically have a small FOV. Some existing approaches for a HMD to be used in both VR and AR may rely on some simple mechanical flip up/flip down mechanisms that allow a user to quickly move the display in and out of their line of sight, which is not suitable for great users experiences.